Resistance to chemotherapeutic agents is rendering previously life-saving drugs useless. Perhaps most alarming, multi-drug resistant bacteria are commonplace in hospital settings and lead to untreatable infections. There is a clear need to develop novel, effective therapies against infectious disease. In addition to compounds that kill pathogenic organisms, anti-infectives, or agents that block or disrupt infection, show promise for eliminating disease without killing the organisms.
Anti-infectives are drugs that target the host-microbe interaction, instead of simply targeting the microbe. Anti-infective drugs may enhance and extend the usefulness of the antibiotics currently available by minimizing selective pressure, which leads to resistance. Using small molecules to block bacterial attachment, or to mask host cell receptors specifically utilized by bacterial pathogens without detriment to the host are novel concepts with great promise, potentially revolutionizing how infectious diseases may be treated in the coming century. Exposure to infectious microbes cannot be eliminated, particularly in developing countries and microbes cannot be stopped from evolving resistances to chemical agents. Thus, there is a need to continually evaluate and update the therapeutic arsenal to fight infectious disease and to improve methods for developing combinatorial chemical therapies that target multiple vulnerabilities of the bacterium and minimize microbial resistances.
Therapeutic drug development would benefit from animal infection models that are more flexible than those currently available. Chemical agents that either kill pathogens or halt their growth, traditionally have been identified using in vitro screens. After identification of a candidate compound, animal model systems may then be used to study their effect on the pathogen. There is a continuing need to conduct chemical screens in a convenient, inexpensive in vivo system that will better facilitate testing of novel anti-infective agents and formulating combinatorial therapies.